Kaya wandjoo ngala Noongarpedia – Welcome to our Noongarpedia

Dave: Wanjoo wanjoo (welcome, welcome) Ingrid, Jennie and Gideon. Can I ask you to begin by introducing yourself and telling us about your role in the Noongarpedia project? No, I have changed my mind. Can I ask you to introduce each other?

Ingrid: Kaya Pop Dave. Nyung koort quoppa nooonook djenniny. My heart is happy to see you Dave.

Nidja baal Gideon Digby. Baal quoppaduk wedjela maaman. Baal boordier Noongarpedia. This is Gideon, he is a beautiful non-Aboriginal man who has been central in leading us in the Noongarpedia work. Baal boordier Wikimedia Australia. He is the President of Wikimedia Australia. Baal gnulla koorl Noongarpedia kalyogool. He has been traveling along with us on the project continually.

Nidja Mum Jeno. Baal nyininy koorlboorli yirra yaakiny karnarn. This is Jen Buchanan. She sits behind, standing tall and speaking truly. Baal Katatjin Koorlboorli University of Western Australia. She is a Research Associate of the project and is based at the University of Western Australia.

Jennie: Kaya Dave. Nidja Gideon. As well as being a quobbaduk maaman Gideon has been dabakan koorliny kolbang, helping us to go along steadily from the earliest stages of the project. Not only has he been a magic contact with the global wiki community and a godsend when it comes to the technical elements of setting up and making the ’pedia work, but he has also been the best friend of the project: he is definitely Noongarpedia moort – family.

Gideon: Kaya Dave. Wanjoo to you too. Nidja Ingo Cumming. This is Ingrid Cumming. She is a Wadjuk Balardong Noongar and is a Research Associate who has been working from Curtin University. She has been working closely with Jen and me throughout the project, helping design and carry out the various projects within the Noongarpedia Project. Ingrid and Jen’s roles have been a combination of traditional research, connecting with Noongar and Noongar groups, helping to design the early platforms, facilitating Wikibombs, workshops with tertiary students, running the work in schools, acting as language translator and helping to record the project.

Dave: Can I get you to start talking about your thinking during the early stages of the work?

Jennie: The development of the ’pedia started from the premise that in order to be successful, three aspects of knowledge networking must encouraged, with each emphasising the civic nature of cultural communication and knowledge sharing. This involved working with: knowledge domains, sources and agents:

1. Knowledge domains: For practical reasons we limited our project to a number of broad knowledge domains or areas of Noongar knowledge. We started by recognising that these would not be comprehensive or exclusive. The domains were:

Ingrid: We also recognised that since Noongar does not simply belong to the pre-colonial past, where an antiquarian approach might seek to preserve and archive it, further domains would likely emerge. Indeed, once the project was under way and after contemplation by the senior Noongar involved, we were able to reconfigure the ‘knowledge domain’ classifications around the following:

Ingrid: One of the team (Len Collard) has previously described these ideas as the foundation of ‘Noongar theory’:

2. Knowledge sources: We identified a number of key ‘sources’ for the trial version of the Noongarpedia. These included:

The project also turned to existing databases in various stages of evolution. Some of these included:

Gideon: The third aspect is:

3. Knowledge agents: We looked for ways to encourage and mobilise members of different communities as ‘knowledge agents’. We wanted to set up the Noongarpedia as a way for community to form and to act as knowledge producers. So rather than adopting the conventional Western research approach, by having us as the experts and sole producers, we wanted to use a Noongarpedia to facilitate others as experts, following a model of ‘distributed expertise’ that suits the internet era.

In this way we and other Wikimedians became mentors and co-producers. We set out to attract others to a process of becoming volunteers, activists and ‘knowledge citizens’, sharing in a global knowledge gift economy. This is in line with Wikipedia’s own practice, where ‘volunteers’ edit all entries. We also thought it would more likely guarantee sustainability of production after this project is completed. Thus, we set out actively to recruit and to mentor users as researchers and knowledge agents, all the way through the community, from schoolchildren to elders.

This was in some ways the most important part of the project, since it involved recruiting citizens to the Noongar online polis or democratic space.

Some might suggest that we depart from traditional knowledge-transfer techniques, where elders are central to the process of managing the transmission of Noongar knowledge. We do accept, as Collard et al. (2004) put it: ‘boordier or elders are still acknowledged as the custodians of knowledge and wisdom of their boodjar, moort and katitjin, and are responsible for the perpetuation through ongoing communications of Nyungar theories, knowledges and applications’.

Ingrid: However, we take the view that this has always occurred within a context where other Noongar generations have considerable influence and involvement in knowledge. Transmission has never been possible without elders receiving assistance from others. Furthermore, over the past two hundred years Noongar elders have taken on new forms of teaching, including using English and Noongar English, adopting new family systems to combat the loss of old sub-section and skin relationships, using literature, film, and new musical genres (e.g. gospel, country and reggae) to teach their young and relying upon young people to help guide the process of imparting culture (Collard and Palmer, 2015a; 2015b; K. Palmer, 2016).

Although senior Noongar people are both conducting and assisting the project, it is equally true that young people with an interest in popular music and culture, in urban life and technology, and also non-Noongar sympathisers, share responsibility for uploading the language and its burden of knowledge into the digital environment.

Indeed, a difficulty that is potentially dangerous for the future of the language is experienced when Noongar people or groups (whether families or associations) retain proprietorial control over language (word hoards and usages; not including legitimate intellectual property in textual form), because refusal to open access to the language, by those who see themselves as its custodians, may hasten rather than prevent its further reduction as a speech community.

Dave: Ingrid, can you talk about the early stages of the project. What did you start by doing and how did it get moving?

Ingrid: In the very early parts of the project we all had some work to do to get on the same page so to speak. We also had to think about some of the challenges that might be a head of us.

During the early stages of conversation among the initial team, it became evident that we would have to contend with layers of impacts associated with intergenerational colonial trauma. We predicted that this may deter Noongar community members from supporting the work and sharing their knowledge on culture and language; and that they would be very uncomfortable with Noongar knowledge being put on an open-access global network. Dealing with this was a crucial part of the early work of the project and something that took much of our time during the first year.

However, what seemed more clear as the project progressed was that the Wikipedia platform itself might prove helpful, not just in allowing people to start making Noongar knowledge public but also in allowing us to experiment with how to move through the challenges of postcolonial trauma.

Dave: Jen and Ingo, can you explain this a little more?

Jennie: Well, some of our concerns proved correct. There is massive trauma to people caused by the history of families being separated from each other and from country, of kids being punished for using Noongar language, of Noongar knowledge being stolen at the same time as people were stripped of their ability to pass it onto their young people.

Ingrid: Yes, many Noongar are understandably cautious about making their stories, their language and their knowledge available to those outside their immediate family. For some it is incredibly painful to see others using Noongar language when they and their families have had it taken generations ago. Others have seen outsiders like academics and other researchers make good out of this knowledge, gaining academic qualifications and gaining kudos from what they have learned from Noongar while Noongar families have gained nothing.

Jennie: This is one of the key reasons why Wikipedia and similar platforms had not been taken up by Noongar. In addition, we spent some good time thinking about Noongar community and the history of modes of knowledge transmission. We considered how in the past Noongar knowledge had been presented, utilised, edited, managed and controlled. We predicted that this would be a huge challenge to the project.

Dave: This is very interesting when I think about work that is going on elsewhere in the field of what could be called ‘Indigenous knowledge transformation and transmission’. I’ve been noticing the tensions that have emerged since Indigenous groups have rebuilt their capacity and control over Indigenous knowledge. I have long suspected that one set of tensions comes from an ontological difference between the general geist, spirit, or approach to knowledge that is taken for granted by Western knowledge practice and institutions, on the one hand, and on the other, the approach derived from Noongar knowledge systems.

Of course many of the traditional Western ideas and practices have been seriously shaken up by the global digital revolution, particularly since the creation of Web 2.0 platforms.

Typically, Western practice and institutions (such as universities, heritage organisations and old disciplines in the sciences and social sciences) approach their work with Indigenous groups using the following narrative structure as a frame. This frame takes much of its inspiration from Romantic traditions.

Chapter one of this narrative I’ll call the ‘Genesis’ chapter. Here, so the story goes, Indigenous knowledge existed as pristine, intact and full of magnificence (or at least with great insight). Many of our early coastal explorers, visiting the shores of the west coast of Australia, saw Noongar as those who possessed wisdom untainted by the iniquities of Europe, and representing the key to the study of what was called ‘the History of Man’. In this chapter science ‘discovers’ knowledge that its rich for the taking.

Chapter two I’ll call ‘Tainting by outsider forces’. Here, ironically, the cruel and despicable forces of colonisation smash Indigenous knowledge-holders. I say ironically because, as Edward Said and others have reminded us, science and the academy were deeply implicated in that process and have since played a huge part in the ‘Orientalisation’ of Indigenous knowledge (Said, 1987).

Chapter three I’ll call the ‘Death of culture’ chapter. Here, those Indigenous people who survive the onslaught are a ‘broken people’, culturally deprived and lost, devoid of any traditional knowledge and living in a dysfunctional state with little access to the knowledge, language and benefits of modernity. The only hints of the old knowledge remain in remnant artefacts, often called ‘tangible heritage’, and in the form of burial sites, rock art, tools and the occasional sacred tree. It is assumed that in limited circumstances some elders possess some of this knowledge.

The final chapter I’ll call the ‘the Emergence of the New High Priests’. This conclusion to the story starts from the same premise that has prompted most social policy interventions into the lives of Indigenous Australians: that there is a need for special measures to be taken to ‘protect’ this knowledge, knowledge that is facing a crisis of survival. The job of these new heroes of knowledge, these ‘New High Priests’, is to capture what remains and see that it is protected in what my Roebourne friend, Ngarluma man Tyson Mowerin, calls ‘sleeping archives’ (cited in Collard and Palmer, 2015a).

I am not suggesting that elements of this narrative are in some way untrue. However, its consequence, knowledge has been captured by experts such as historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and curators. This sets up a particular mode of knowledge transmission that, by and large, has been controlled by non-Aboriginal people and institutions.

Ingrid, can I bring you in here?

Ingrid: Yes, in contrast, Noongar knowledge narratives tend to have a different structure, drawing upon different ontologies. In these sets of stories, there is an interconnected relationship between katatjin (knowledge/law), boodjar (country), moort (family and community) and wiern (cultural safety, spirit and health).

Noongar katatjin (knowledge) cannot exist in the absence of Noongar family, country and healthy spirit. Conversely, where the other elements exist, knowledge will flourish. The ongoing health (what Westerners might call knowledge integrity) of Noongar katatjin is held in song, on country, through ‘karnarn’ (speaking truly across the generations). In this way Noongar knowledge is a living thing, made alive through country, visits to country and maintained by good relationships across moort (family).

The way that it is ‘protected’ is through it being produced and reproduced across the generations. Rather than collecting and capturing it, knowledge is maintained by dancing it, singing it, walking it, speaking it and sharing it. In this way the knowledge experts are the dancers, singers, storytellers, teachers, and carers of children. In other words, the way that katatjin is made strong and brought back from ‘sleeping’ is to reignite its production. We don't necessarily put it somewhere (like books, museums, dictionaries etc.), we get it happening.

And that’s roughly where we got to after lots of talking and lots of contemplation. This didn’t relieve us of the challenges but it gave us a way of thinking about how we could move ahead.

Jennie: Yes, what we discovered was that the structure of ’pedia platforms had some things in common with Noongar knowledge practice. Just as Noongar learning has long relied on active processes of doing and producing, ’pedias get built by those visiting and moving across the divide between those who use the sites passively to consume knowledge and those who start to post and become producers of knowledge.

Ingrid: There was also a lot of discussion about the language to be used on the ’pedia site. We thought that ideally it would be wonderful to build a site that was set out using Noongar and only included posts in Noongar. However, this presented a number of important obstacles or challenges.

The first challenge is in coming to a decision about what constitutes Noongar. Research undertaken by our colleagues at the Noongar Boodjar Language Cultural Aboriginal Corporation indicates that Noongar grammar has undergone massive reconfiguration over the past one hundred or so years.

Noongar Language Centre: http://noongarboodjar.com.au/language/

The next challenge would be in recruiting a good number of people who are confident enough in language to become active in posting. The evidence in front of us from what and who we knew suggested that the few people who were confident enough to use full sentences in Noongar were not particularly ‘digitally native’ (members of a generation that grew up with competence in digital platforms) or digitally confident.

Furthermore, most of these people are overcommitted and involved in other Noongar renewal work. Clearly, allowing only posts in full Noongar sentences would likely limit the participation of younger people, who were beginning their journey with Noongar language and knowledge, leaving them out of the process until they could first acquire a high level of skill and knowledge.

Jennie: All of this brought us to a point where we decided that it was time to experiment with the use of a ’pedia platform. We decided to bracket our concerns and ethical questions and start doing a number of things that might take us along the road of creating a ’pedia.

Within the first several months of the project, much of our time was occupied with gathering as much information and sources about Noongar culture as we could. We started by using the set of listed domains that we had set out within the ARC grant and using them as a structure to help guide our search. This included country, story, citizenship and pop culture. In the first instance we stuck to what was already available on open-source platforms already available online. This allowed us to start creating entries in what we called the ‘hybrid wiki site’ specially created for our project.

We used the term ‘hybrid’ to denote our keenness to design a ’pedia that would encourage people to use Noongar, English and what Len Collard calls ‘South-west West Australian’ – combining Australian English and Noongar usages and content.

Gideon: Soon it became clear that there is a lot of information about Noongar knowledge already available in digital form, yet widely spread across the World Wide Web. This prompted the idea of creating a blog-like website to show communities, and the world, all the resources found so far during the project. This idea became a reality with the creation of what we called the Gnullar Kadadjiny website.

The Gnullar kadadjiny website was no longer needed after the creation of the Noongarpedia incubator site.

Later in the first year the ‘Noongarpedia’ Facebook page was created, attracting over 250 followers, keen to keep updated on the project.

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Noongarpedia/

Quickly the project found a means through which to identify data that helped with the creation of the ’pedia, while staying connected with those who later became key Noongarpedians.

At the same time, Jennie began to establish a relationship with me. At that time I was Vice-President of Wikimedia Australia.

Jennie: Gideon became a critical mentor, support and key member of the Noongarpedia moort (family), instrumental in the ongoing success of the project. He taught us much. For example, we discovered, through a process of trial and error, that Wikipedia’s ‘Sandboxes’ are not an offline and private option to learn, understand and make draft entries. We found that Wikimedians from around the globe began to jump in, editing and in some cases taking down our posts, because we had not done them correctly. Without Gideon to guide us through this lesson it would have been a catastrophe for the project. At the same time, we began to develop our foundation Noongar skeleton site – a hosted and password-protected incubator site for Noongar language use.

Current site available at http://wikimedia.org.au/noongarwp/Main_Page#Knowledge_sources